DR. A

After Dr. G, I started therapy with Dr. A, president of the American Psychiatric Association. Who could be more of an expert? I reasoned.

He was gray-haired, grandfatherly, and smoked a pipe, his office in a comfortable room in a beautiful Victorian house in San Francisco, which, unfortunately, was a forty-five minute drive from Concord. I have little memory of what our sessions were like in the ten months that followed because I never wrote about them.

I do remember I had such a desperate need to be heard—and believed!—that, since I could only afford one session a week, I spent the days in between unburdening myself in fantasy sessions in the run up to the real ones. But while I was voluble in my imaginary scenarios, face-to-face with Dr. A I felt anxious and constrained, though he seemed amiable enough—at first. I remember him saying on one occasion that I had the makings of a strong ego, which gave me hope. On another occasion, however, when I heard him in a phone conversation with another patient and I remarked (no doubt a little wistfully) how comfortable their relationship seemed, he told me that such a relationship had to be earned.

As I mentioned in my vignette “Shame,” for the longest time I didn’t dare ask him any personal questions because I was afraid if he told me he was divorced, it would be proof to me that love didn’t really exist—which I felt at the time would be more than I could bear. If such a prominent expert on mental health couldn’t make marriage work, what hope was there for me?

So it was many months before I found the courage to ask if he was married and if he had any children. In the interim I’d spotted his spotless black Mercedes Benz behind a chain link fence in the back of the building and seen him walking a frou-frou little dog— and I’d wondered if he wasn’t a bit of a snob. He said yes to my first question—and that his wife was an interior decorator—but no to the second. On the drive home I found myself wishing I had a therapist with four kids, a mutt for a dog, and a beat-up station wagon—someone who seemed more approachable.

I also remember that when I put up fliers all over my neighborhood and started teaching an art class for kids in my mother’s home, he was singularly unimpressed, though to me it seemed like a huge leap forward. I had always felt so constricted by the institutions that had structured my existence from as far back as I could remember—the educational system and the jobs I’d had—that the idea of being self-employed, even modestly so, felt…revolutionary!

Then one day he told me he didn’t believe that the wonderful, empowering conversation I’d just had with Ella about our friendship had happened the way I said it did. When I asked why, he said, “Because I don’t believe you’re capable of intimacy.”

If your therapist doesn’t believe you when you’re telling the truth, my advice is to head for the nearest exit.

Coincidentally, I’d just received a letter from my father announcing he wouldn’t be sending me any more money—this despite the fact that I was still struggling with depression. For all he knew, I was at a critical stage in my therapy, just as I had been with my voice lessons. My take-away was that my father didn’t care if I lived or died. And though Dr. A offered to lower his fee, I did head for the exit.